US officials today shrugged off complaints from the Pakistani government about a brief military invasion of Pakistani territory and the killing of at least 60 tribesmen in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas insisting the raids are justified under “the inherent right of self-defense.”
Though the US regularly launches CIA drone strikes against Pakistan’s tribal areas, it has been extremely rare to launch military attacks against the region, with a couple of incidents in 2008 sparking major tension along the border.
And Pakistan has reacted with serious condemnation again today over the most recent attack, insisting it violated their sovereignty. The Pakistan Foreign Office also denied US claims that a secret agreement exists between the two nations.
The US maintains that the people killed were believed to be the same people who had launched an attack earlier in the day in the Khost Province of Afghanistan. It remains unclear how, even if this were true, it would extend into an “imminent danger” situation justifying an attack on an allied nation, since whoever the people were, they were in Pakistani territory at the time they were killed.
